American businessman Tom Wagner has completed a deal to buy Birmingham City.
Birmingham announced on Monday that Wagner’s company, Shelby Companies Limited, had agreed to take control of 45.64 per cent of the club and all of St Andrews Stadium. Wagner is a co-founder of Knighthead Capital Management, which oversees around $9billion (£7.25bn) in investments.
The American is taking over the club from Hong Kong-listed company Birmingham Sports Holdings. Wagner’s company, Shelby Companies Limited, is named in reference to the popular TV show Peaky Blinders, which is set in Birmingham. It is a subsidiary of Knighthead Annuity & Life Assurance Company.
Wagner has exchanged two sale and purchase agreements, but both are subject to the approval of the English Football League (EFL) and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. He will also have to undertake an owners and directors’ test before he is allowed to formally take over control of the club.
The club said in a statement: “Tom Wagner and the Knighthead team will be joining us at St. Andrew’s today for the Club’s final Sky Bet Championship fixture of the season. We look forward to giving them a very warm welcome. We are excited for the future.”
Birmingham conclude their season at home to Sheffield United on Monday. They are 17th in the Championship – their best finish since 2016, following a period of turmoil and uncertainty off the pitch.
The takeover is understood to have cost £35m and has been overseen by European tour chief executive Keith Pelley and former Microsoft salesman Jeremy Dale. Part of the plans are to redevelop the crumbling St Andrews into social housing and build a new stadium on a 40-acre piece of derelict land that used to be a go-karting track.
The Blues have been through a messy period since the 2011 League Cup triumph over Arsenal. Around that time the club was passed to former Hong Kong hairdresser Carson Yeung who was later convicted of a string of serious money-laundering offences.
It then went to Birmingham Sports Holdings Limited, a Hong-Kong Stock Exchange-listed front for a fragmented collection of associated companies, headed by Cambodian businessman Vong Pech.
This season, under manager John Eustace, there has been some stability on the pitch, and the hope is that Wagner’s takeover will provide something similar off it. “I’ve tried to bring in a no-excuse culture since I joined,” Eustace told The Telegraph.
“I think Birmingham’s been associated with lots of excuses over the years. Being from the area and reading the papers, everyone’s always saying, ‘Oh, it’s Birmingham, it’s what happens at Birmingham’.
“I think Birmingham needs to get the respect it deserves as a football club going forward. We’ve got Aston Villa on the other side of town and we should be aiming to get there. It’s going to take a long time to get there and we’ve got to get this kind of ‘joke club’ mentality out of people’s system. To do that, you’ve got to stop the excuses and build properly.”
